


Betwixt

by kisahawklin



Category: Criminal Minds, Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 22:52:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2168241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Derek sees him, he barely takes any notice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Betwixt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [colls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colls/gifts).



~~~

The first time Derek sees him, he barely takes any notice. The guy's tall, sure, towering over the guy he's with – and that guy's no midget – but he's wearing a flannel shirt and jeans and fits right in with the rest of the small town folks hanging around the crime scene. He doesn't ping Derek's radar until they turn around and wander off.

Crime scenes like the ones they're called in for tend to be big news in small towns; they've had people camp out for days at the scene of a grisly murder. These two guys are walking away like they're almost bored.

Derek puts it out of his mind and when they catch the unsub five days later, he's already forgotten about them.

~~~

The second time, it takes a minute for Derek to place the guy. Once he does, though, he pays more attention. You don't often see a lot of six and a half foot tall guys hanging around, and this one is conspicuously annoyed in his direction.

He's alone this time, watching the team do their work, and Derek gives half a thought to the guy he was with the last time, if maybe he's off doing something else and the tall one got stuck checking out the murder scene.

He pays close attention for a while. It's strange enough to see someone at two crime scenes in three years (there's no way it's coincidence) and the guy's annoyance is off the charts. He stays until he and Prentiss pack up and go to the police station, and Derek watches him in the rear view of the rental car, tries to see if he even moves from his place in the crowd. They turn the corner and the guy hasn't moved a muscle. For just a second, Derek wishes he'd stuck around to see what the guy did once they cleared out.

It doesn't matter, though. They don't catch the unsub, but the murders stop cold, and after ten days with no victims and no leads, they have to assume the unsub died or went cold turkey. Derek doesn't think the unsub would've been able to quit, not with a murder-every-48-hours kind of habit, so he indulges a bit of schadenfreude and hopes the unsub died a slow, painful death.

~~~

The third time is only eight months later, and the crime scenes are bad enough to make even the team a little queasy. It looks like the unsub painted the walls with his victims' blood, and there are piles of some unknown organic substance all over the dingy underground apartment. The smell alone is nauseating, but the bits and pieces of the victims they're finding all over place are what makes him go out for a breath of fresh air.

The tall guy is on the street, of course he is – Derek's already figured out that it's the strange and disgusting cases where he'll show up – and he's dutifully staying not only behind the tape but behind the crowd. Maybe it's just the nature of the unsub this time, but he wants to ask that guy some questions. He gets the giant in his sights and makes a beeline straight for him, but the guy gets skittish and backs away, effortlessly turning the corner before Derek can make his way out of the crowd, and gone from sight when Derek jogs around the building less than a minute later.

His first thought is that this dude's a serial killer junkie, road tripping to any weird crimes that cross the wire – this one is certainly weird. It's like unsub has people under some kind of thrall – there are people who swear their neighbors are the ones that came into their houses in the middle of the night, that forcefully took members of their family out of the house, knife to their necks, never to be seen again.

The neighbors are never seen again either, so Derek just can't work out what, exactly, is going on.

Just like the last time he saw the tall guy, the murders just stop. The trail goes beyond cold – it goes dead – and they stick around for a week, but nothing is forthcoming, so they eventually have to go back to Quantico to lick their wounded pride.

Derek begins to doubt the serial killer junkie theory; he's got several more ominous theories now, but he needs more proof and he doesn't have time to go back to Kansas City to get what he needs. Not that he'd be able to get his hands on any lucky camera footage two weeks after the last time he saw the guy, but he might've tried if they hadn't caught another case almost immediately.

~~~

It's almost three years later before the guy shows up on his radar again, and something is noticeably different about him. He's wearing a suit, for one, and he looks… cold. He'd been annoyed or frustrated every time Derek'd seen him before. Lines around his eyes and mouth that meant the murders bothered him. This time there's none of that concern, nothing but a cursory glance over their whole operation before he turns and walks away.

He shows up at two more sites Derek is investigating over the next two days, always in that well-cut suit. Derek asks a few people if they know him, but there's never any recognition in their shrugs or head shakes. He's not local, and he hasn't interacted with anyone enough that they even remember him – which is saying something, as he's pretty damn memorable.

The guy seems to bug out of town after that. Derek doesn't see him again, and they catch the unsub almost two weeks later, JJ coming through with a hunch about a local church that breaks the case wide open.

~~~

Derek gets lucky the next time he sees the guy, a year and a half later. It's another gross one and Derek goes out the back to see about points of entry and exit. The tall guy is in the alley behind the house – back in flannel, jeans, and worry lines which makes Derek feel relieved for some odd reason – and he startles when the door opens. He's backing away from the house, turning to run in earnest when Derek calls after him. 

"Stop!" Derek yells. He doesn't really expect the guy to stop, so he breaks into a run, hopping over the back fence easily.

The tall guy is a obviously a runner, though, and it doesn't take long before he outdistances Derek handily, between the freakishly long legs and remarkable stamina. Derek gives up after about six blocks, but when he comes back, he sees the second guy from their first run-in sitting in an older-model black Impala. He's checking his watch like maybe he missed his friend running off down the city streets.

Derek keeps his eyes neutral, trying to avoid spooking him, but before he can get close enough to read the license plate, the guy gets a call and a second later, the car burns rubber as it pulls a U-turn onto the street and heads the other direction.

~~~

It turns out that the Impala – it's a '67, Reid tells him when they see it drive by later – is a very conspicuous car. People have seen it all over town, and when they mention that the two guys driving it like to take their dinner at the local greasy spoon, Derek decides to check it out.

When he shows up, there are three of them in a booth in the middle of the mostly-empty diner. Besides the two he's already seen, there's a guy in a trenchcoat with mussed hair and a day's worth of stubble.

"Hi," the tall guy says, unfolding out of the booth to his full height. He gestures for Derek to sit in the booth across the aisle. Derek takes the seat closest to the door and furthest from the giant's two friends. He told Hotch he was coming here to get dinner for them all, but he didn't tell him anything else. He's regretting that decision.

"I'm Sam Winchester," the guy says once they've both settled into the booth. "That's my brother Dean," he says, pointing at his regular accomplice, and then to trenchcoat, "and this is Cas."

 _Brother_ , Derek thinks. They don't look much alike, but they have a lot of similarities in their posture and demeanor. Cas is a bit more of a puzzle. He's not sure what such an ordinary guy is doing with these two. They're obviously dangerous, though Derek hasn't quite decided whether they're on the side of the angels or not. Cas looks like he might do their taxes.

"Derek Morgan," he answers, after a moment of sizing them up. He takes Sam's offered hand, not surprised by the solid handshake. "I'd say nice to meet you, but I have a feeling it's not so nice, being on your radar."

Sam shrugs, concern obvious on his face. "It's not so nice being on your radar, either."

Derek smiles, going for disarming. _We're all friends here._ "You do seem to turn up at a surprising number of my crime scenes."

He hears a rumble from the booth across the way. He's not sure, but it sounds a lot like, "You turn up at a lot of _our_ crime scenes."

"We investigate crimes, too," Sam says, confirming Dean's growled statement. "We just investigate crimes of a more…" He smiles a little self-consciously. "...supernatural nature."

Derek nods, slowly. He can see how muscular Sam is, and while Dean isn't as tall as Sam, he's broader in the shoulder – even more muscles, possibly even more of a threat. Cas doesn't seem that threatening, but he's getting out of the booth to stand next to Sam, and that's worrisome. If they're all suffering some kind of mass delusion, he could be in real trouble here.

Dean slings an arm over the back of his booth and meets Derek's eyes for a long moment. 

"We don't have time to do the whole "the supernatural is real" tutorial right now," he says. "We've got Heaven and Hell on our ass and we just can't deal with Earth, too, so…" He stops and looks up at trenchcoat. "Cas?"

Sam reaches his hand out for another handshake. "It's been nice knowing you, Derek. Keep up the good fight."

Derek leans back, trying to decide if he can make it to his car before Sam's freaky long legs catch up with him. Turns out he should've been worried about his freaky long arms, though, because Sam reaches across the table to grab Derek's arm and yank him forward, splaying him over the formica. Before Derek can even react, trenchcoat touches two fingers to his forehead and everything goes black.

~~~

"Sir?"

Derek shakes his head and looks up at the waitress. He must have been daydreaming. He can't imagine what about, though. The last few minutes seem blissfully empty in his memory. He needs more sleep – this unsub is really getting to him.

"Yeah, sorry," he says, taking the bags of food she's handing him. "Thanks. What do I owe you?"

"Oh, it's all taken care of," she says with a bright smile. "Enjoy!"

Derek grins. There's something to be said for small towns. "Thanks, ma'am," he says, smiling to himself as he loads up and heads back to the team.

~~~


End file.
